So how would I describe Lost Art Press? To say we are hand tool enthusiasts, purveyors of the lost art etc, is all true but it doesn’t quite capture our real spirit. I prefer woodworking adventurers. You know like the people from “Land of the Lost” wandering around the dangerous and fantastic. So to keep in the spirit of LAP while on vacation I agreed to jump into an ocean kayak and head directly toward a pod of dolphins. I had seen these young girls do this numerous times and it looked quite easy so what could go wrong?
While hauling the kayak out past the breakers, the bow caught a wave and slammed into my chin causing a small chip in my tooth. As those of us over 40 realize, it is just as easy to get hurt as it was when we were in our 20’s, the difference is the length of time it takes to heal. Like the time a helpful student pointed out an error of mine with a left that put my nose into the shape of the letter “C”. It took three months for the swelling to reduce and my nose to look close enough to call straight. I also nursing a groin pull but that’s another blog entry.
So anyway, I had this chipped tooth that needed to be fixed. I dismissed the obvious dremel with sanding disc as so 90’s. I wanted a hand tool. Ah an emery board!! Now I had to violate certain hand tool maxims like not using the entire length of the tool. My mouth was in the way which caused excessive wear in small areas of the board which required me to float the entire board prior to next use. But the grit was perfect! I say about 20 or so strokes did the trick. And now the photos…
I’ve owned two Volkswagen Karmann Ghias. The first one was a 1970 with chunky taillights, a good deal of Bondo, rotting rubber, a faded paint job and an incredible dual-port engine.
My second Karmann Ghia (the one I have now) is a 1968. It’s a California car. Rust-free and (thanks to the readers of my “Workbenches” book) completely restored.
With my first Karmann Ghia, I couldn’t drive anywhere without someone stopping me and asking me about the car. Even a nun once asked me if I had dual carbs (I didn’t). With my current 1968 Karmann Ghia, I’ve probably had one person make a comment in the last two years.
What’s the difference? The paint color. My first Ghia was a Porshe red with an all-black interior. My current Ghia is a historically accurate two-tone job: Lotus white on the bottom and black on the top.
There is something about the color red that makes us crazy. When I was in graduate school I took every film class I could get into and still graduate as a journalist. And I took complementary classes in color theory (“Hmm, theoretically that leaf is green.”)
I don’t think color theory is bunk. Warm colors (yellow, red and orange) are stimulating. Cool colors (blues and greens) are calming.
This is important to remember when finishing furniture. People don’t want their furniture to calm them. How much blue aniline dye do you think gets sold every year? People want their furniture to stimulate them.
Woodworker Warren May explained it to me better than anyone else. He makes a lot of furniture out of black cherry, a native hardwood here in Kentucky. Every year he makes a number of Kentucky-style pieces on spec and puts them in his showroom in Berea, Ky., where he also sells a twanging fleet of dulcimers.
May’s showroom is awash in windows and natural light. But he knows that when he first builds a spec piece in cherry it’s not likely to sell. However, once the piece has spent a few months in his showroom soaking up UV rays, the cherry catches fire and someone gets a love connection with a sideboard or a serpentine table. He’s watched this happen year after year.
From the day May explained it, I wanted to find a way to accelerate the aging of cherry to create the effect as soon as possible. After looking into it, the magazine’s staff found that we weren’t alone. There was a lot of advice out there on how to age cherry, from a bath of lye to potassium dichromate to dying shellac.
I favor approaches that use the fewest number of chemicals that can turn my eye sockets into places to keep my pencils, so the first two options were out. The dyed shellac worked, and I’ve used that on a number of occasions.
But the best approach we found was to apply a coat of boiled linseed oil and let the project sit in the sun for a day. (Small projects can be treated in a tanning bed. We tried this and got some strange looks.) The cherry quickly reacts to the oxygen and ultraviolet light to darken. Then you can add a topcoat finish and be done with it.
Of course, I’m kinda weird because I like green-colored furniture. Some of my favorite Arts & Crafts pieces from the Byrdcliffe colony and Gustav Stickley are green. What gives? Well the theory is that we evolved in the jungle and so we can see more shades of green than any other. (Anyone who wants to test this theory is welcome to come to the beer garden at Mecklenburg Gardens in Cincinnati and dispute me. The 100-year-old vine-wrapped patio will convince you I’m right.)
This shouldn’t surprise you too much. I’m the guy who sold the red, attention-getting car for something that allows me to be an anonymous, green-loving simian.
Greetings from Lost Art Press. The Elves, Sharon and myself are headed to Duck, N.C., for the week. We are closing during this time and will re-open on Sunday, Aug. 9. We will stay on the email to answer any queries.
We have gotten a number of questions concerning the Chris’s new book “Handplane Essentials.” We are unable to take pre-orders for the book on our site due to technical issues (we are trying to get this feature available). However, Lost Art Press will have the book available in early August. The book will be signed by Chris for our customers and we will have plenty of books.
Thank you for your patronage and we always look forward to hearing from you.
If you are an accomplished finisher, stop reading right here. There’s nothing for you below. I hear there are some funny new movies of monkeys ironing linen shorts at YouTube.
This week I’m applying many thin coats of varnish to a chest of drawers that I’ve been building during nights and weekends at my shop at home. The finish recipe is my favorite for black cherry: First apply a coat of boiled linseed oil, let the project sit in the sun and allow the oil to cure in a warm room for a week or so.
Then wipe on thin coats of a satin varnish that has been thinned with low-odor paint thinner (also called mineral spirits). I like three parts varnish to one part paint thinner. Sand between each coat with a broken-in #180-grit sanding sponge. After about six coats, the result is a warm and durable finish. It takes time for each coat of finish to dry, but that gives me time to write, sharpen and tune up the machines for my next project.
This weekend I stumbled into two small details that make this finish easier. The first detail concerns the sanding sponge. When sanding each coat, the process creates a fine powder all over the project. With varnish, I have found it best to remove this powder before applying the following coat (it’s not as necessary as when you use shellac or lacquer because those finishes dissolve and bond to the coats below).
I like to use a tack rag to remove this dust, but I am tackless this weekend. So I started thinking about tacky things in my shop. I half-pondered even making my own tack rag. Then I looked at my 3M sanding sponge.
Hmmm. One side is abrasive. The other is a sponge. Duh, I wonder if the sponge side would pull up the powder? It does indeed, and quite well. And when the sponge becomes loaded you can wash it out and renew it. I can’t believe I’ve been using sanding sponges since “Silver Spoons” was on television and never thought of this.
Second detail: Gloves. Whenever I work with solvent, even paint thinner, I like to use gloves. It makes clean-up easier and I worry less about what danger is lurking on the solvent’s MSDS. Usually I use latex gloves from a big box store for mild solvents. I have always hated these gloves because they fall apart while I’m applying the finish and leave little bits of latex behind. I’m sure there are better-quality latex gloves out there, but not in my local stores.
A few weeks ago Managing Editor Megan Fitzpatrick gave me a bag of blue nitrile gloves, which are made using a synthetic polymer. These gloves were made by the same company that makes my latex gloves, so my expectations were low.
Boy was I wrong. The nitrile gloves are far more durable. I’ve applied four coats of finish using the same pair of gloves and they are still going strong without a single tear. Farewell latex.
Today I taught my 8-year-old to sharpen. It took five minutes.
Instead of teaching her about abrasives and honing angles and all the other theory my head is filled with, I took a hands-off approach to this important hand skill.
I showed her how to secure the blade in a honing guide. I showed her the three waterstones (and the sheer delight of squirting water from the plant sprayer into your mouth. Then Katy decided to use the plant sprayer to pretend she was a boy… a story for another blog and perhaps Katy’s prom night.)
Then I gave her these instructions for sharpening: “Rub it back and forth until it is as shiny as you can get it. Then clean it and go to the next stone.”
I walked away and let her give it a whirl. In less than 10 minutes she showed me her edge. I could see myself in it. (In more ways than one, I suppose). Then I showed her how to back off the iron on the polishing stone.
We oiled the blade together and reassembled the block plane. Then she took the plane to work on pine and pulled up the same wispy shavings she always does. She didn’t have some sort of Zen-like koan-solving moment. The plane just worked like it should work. And sharpening it was no big deal.
Sometimes I think our heads are apt to stop our hands. We read too much, think too much and worry. Sometimes I think the best way to learn a task is to do it without reading anything about it. (Boy this sounds like a dumb argument from a magazine editor.) Just do the task – fail if you need to – but perform the task from beginning to end.
Then read like crazy to understand why the tools worked the way they did.
Last year we did a little experiment with a new employee, Drew Depenning. I told Senior Editor Glen Huey to have Drew cut dovetails during his first week at work. Drew had never cut a single joint by hand. He didn’t know to be afraid. So he cut his dovetails and they came out fine.
With that out of the way, Drew could get on with learning all the ins and outs of the craft.
This works great in woodworking. Probably not so well at a nuclear reactor.
